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How to achieve top grades with punctuation!

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The current series of posts is looking at how to achieve top grades at GCSE English Language and English Literature. As an English tutor, I'm often approached by parents wanting to help their children improve in English.  And improving their writing is often a top priority. But knowing where to start is not always obvious. You can read the previous post, about developing different sentence types,  here . I teach my students how to use punctuation effectively, especially colons and semicolons.  I have written a short ebook to help anyone looking for self-study guidance, called A Dash of Punctuation . Having taught English in schools for over 30 years, I've learnt that as students move into GCSE study, they usually realise that they have not properly learnt some basic grammatical and punctuation rules.  The consequence is that they make mistakes, without understanding why in many cases.  The result can be lower grades than expected, and frustration. Colons and semicolons open up
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How to Achieve Top Grades in Writing

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How do you achieve top grades in writing tasks - for example in GCSE English Language?  I'm often asked this question as an English tutor. One of the ways I've devised to help students improve their writing is by helping them develop the variety and complexity of the sentence structures they use.  I've written an ebook, called The Five Sentence Types Workbook   to help students with this skill. Students have often not learnt how to use commas correctly.  Students often don't understand the difference between main clauses and subordinate clauses. And you do need to understand these grammatical points if you are going to write really well! I am a specialist at stretching able students to achieve high grades, and  offer a free 30 minute online introductory session if you would like to know more .  Contact me via the Contact Form  here .
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Top Grades at GCSE English and English Literature

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It's obviously a challenge to achieve the very highest grades at GCSE English Language and English Literature, but my experience as an English tutor and teacher has enabled me to create many engaging and effective ways to help students achieve top grades. This new series of posts will explore the issue from several different angles.   Today I want to stress two key factors in achieving the highest grades. 1. Reading There is no substitute for reading high quality literature, and I have a number of texts I use with students that I know they will find challenging but also enjoyable and rewarding.   Children are fascinated to learn new, intelligent vocabulary, even if they don't admit it, but some teenage books, though great for encouraging reading, don't make them encounter a really wide vocabulary.   2. Practise Writing I wanted to be a writer when I was at school, and one of my teachers gave me the best advice: just keep practising!  Like any skill, writing develops with de
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A Dash of Punctuation - Learning how to use colons and semicolons in a fun way!

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  The next ebook in the  Hartland English Guides  series is now available -  A Dash of Punctuation: Colons and Semicolons , priced at just £1.99  - and you can receive a  FREE PREVIEW  by completing the contact form below. A Dash of Punctuation   will improve students' writing by helping them understand two neglected punctuation marks: colons and semicolons. Often we shy away from colons and semicolons because they seem a bit tricky, but in my 30 years as a teacher I have developed simple and clear ways to teach students how to use both of these wonderful punctuation marks clearly, correctly, and in ways that make their writing more complex. Available on Amazon, you can purchase your own copy of this ebook via  this link .
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Colons : Improving your Writing with Sherlock Holmes

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This series has been focusing on an interesting way to improve writing by using a short story about Sherlock Holmes. Today's post is about a rarely used punctuation mark: the colon. Students often shy away from using it, but as an English tutor I teach this skill as it can really improve the complexity and elegance of anyone's writing style. The simplest way to use a colon is to introduce a list without having to use extra words. Example Sherlock Holmes had a notebook, a pen and a magnifying glass. Have a go - or ask your child to have a go, if you are helping them - at writing some examples of your own, using a colon to introduce a short list.  I’ve helped you with the first two. 1. I looked around his room and noticed three different things : .. 2. On his table were… 3. If you'd like to know more about using colons and semicolons, I've just published a new ebook in the Hartland English Guides series, called A Dash of Punctuation : Colons and Semicolons , availab
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Observing Cordially - improving your writing with Sherlock Holmes

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Improving writing is about developing lots of mini-skills, and today's post is about the simple skill of varying the words we use for " said ".  It's part of a teaching approach I use called ' W riting with Sherlock Holmes '. As an English tutor, I'm often asked to help students improve their writing.  Varying vocabulary is an important skill that develops as we read and learn a wider and wider range of words. Near the start of the Sherlock Holmes story The Red Headed League, we read two different ways of varying the word "said". The first is simply to add an adverb - " he said cordially " is the example.  The adverb tells us more about the feelings or tone of the person speaking. The other is " I observed ".  The different word makes a subtle difference in the way we understand how and why something is said. What other ways of varying "said" can you think of? If you'd like to know more about my ebook The Five Se
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Writing with Sherlock Holmes (1) - Developing More Complex Sentences

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Many of us want to improve the quality of our writing, or our children's writing.  I'm often asked as an English tutor to help.  But how do you do this? Previous series have looked at improving writing with Emily Dickinson ,   improving creative writing  and improving writing in an exam .  Today's post is about a fun approach I use that appeals to children to help them improve their writing by learning from the creator of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Here's the opening to one of my favourite short stories about Sherlock Holmes, called ' The Red-Headed League ': "I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair." It's a sophisticated opening sentence, a multiple complex sentence, and students may need help with some of the vocabulary. But in my experience they enjoy the challen
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